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Let me explain what i mean by "multi level":

when you use an xsheet to time your animation, if you want to apply effects or motion on the layer you created you can't (at least I can't do it with the tvpaint pro 8.5 trial).

I have some experience with macromedia flash and a killer feature is the "symbols" :

you can create a symbol with a timeline(animation) inside
then duplicate and use this same symbols in several places (and when you correct the animation inside the symbol it will be corrected everywhere).

on top of this you can scale, rotate or even include your animated symbol in another symbol and act on it as you please, which means an infinity of ways to use your original animation(as if custom brushes were tangible editable objects on the scene), AND (the point of the feature), when you modify your original animation it is modified everywhere in real time.

The use of the Xsheet in tvpaint 8.5 let me see the possibility of this feature if we were able to ACT on the layer created via a xsheet (for example being able to use it as a source in an xsheet, and by this way being able to apply to it different effects without having to touch the original animation).

I don't know if it is easy to implement or not, but I think it should not be a possibility to ignore since it would be immensely powerful, I guess the success of flash may be due in great part to the flexibility of this feature (if you can at any time modify the original drawings you have an incredible gain of time when you have to make any correction... and the correction time is really a time/money eater without such a feature).

Is there a workaround for the time beeing?
Or a way to script something that could do the trick?

Thank you very much.

I have been interested in mirage since a long time but could't use it effectively due to the lack of image exposure (you implemented it in 8.5), so I may dive into tvpaint since it looks (since 8.5) as the best software for raster animation... but if it could have also the good stuff of vector softwares(well, just something like the symbols/clones feature i mean) I just can't imagine the power we could have on every bit of the movie in progress, all for better quality in less time!

Hi isd,
All XSheet layer contain only the reference of an image from an other layer. You can use the same original image in many XSheet layer. If you modify the original image, the modification will be reflect in all XSheet layers which are referencing this image.

Is that what you want? If not, please can you add a schema of what you would like to see in a future version of TVP Animation.

I will try to explain in detail the problems I have.

So let's say I want to create the scene drawn below.
The character is running through the screen while the camera pans up to the sky.

To create this animation I decide to :
1- create the running cycle in a project
2-create the timing of the running cycle and make the layer REPEAT
3-Use the keyframer to make the running character slide through the screen. I could also make the clouds slide a little (on separate layers)
4-make the whole scene slide to the sky



here is the story board of the scene



In the project 1, I draw the animation (untimed)



In the project 2, I time the animation with the Xsheet feature.
The reason for using 2 projects is that I could easily modify the drawings when they are not timed (after all, this is the traditional way).
If I modify a drawing in the project 1 it is automatically modified in the project 2, that is GREAT.



in the project 3 I slide the character from left to right to make him run effectively. The reason why I use a new project is because I can't apply the keyframer on a xSheet layer (shame!)

(in this project are also drawn the other elements like the backgrounds layers, and the other animation layers)

Another problem is that if I correct the drawings of the project 1, they won't be automatically corrected in the project 3.
I won't be able to recalculate the project 3 with the new drawings easily. I have to recreate a new keyframer effect and apply it again, this is too time consuming, I can't think of making the compositing in tvpaint because of this (even flash would be better).

Another problem is the repeat layer feature : if I repeat the layer in project 2, and slide it in project 3, the repeated portion of the layer won't be calculated by the keyframer (which will interpolate only the real portion of the layer, that is only one cycle!! (>_<)).



And in the project 4, I pan the whole scene.
Needless to say that if I happen to modify the drawings of project 1 I have to not only recalculate everything but even recreate the camera movements!! Once again, I'd better do this in flash (or after effects or whatever).

So I can see 3 deadly problems :

The first is the impossibility to apply motions on xsheet layers(creating multiple projects will do the trick though).

The second is the lack of layer hierarchy (which once again is dealed with the creation of multiple projects).

The last problem is the impossibility to effectively work with multiple projects without having to recreate the work at each correction (which pretty much undermines the advantage of going numeric. Needless to say : using several projects results in a loss of overall quality, because the same drawings are recalculated several times through the hierarchy).

PS : I don't know if you have tried flash a lot but what I explained here with projects can be done in flash with symbols (a symbol is pretty much what a project is in tvpaint, at the difference that in flash you can access them intuitively and for example you can modify the drawings in project 1, or the camera movement in project 3, anything on the fly, and everything is updated instantly (well, everything is calculated in real time... which is not the case of the keyframer in tvpaint). Of course flash has some crappy painting features, and may never have better ones (thanks adobe).

So, what is lacking in TVpaint is that little advantage of being able to correct anything without having to recalculate anything(even after effects allows changing the source without changing the motions)... It may not be a problem for animation in itself, but for compositing it is.

As a solo-artist the reason why I'd like to do everything in the same software is precisely because it could allow me to access and correct any part of the work on the fly...

There is no such a software for the time being (well, if you can cope with the crappy look of flash there is one but...) maybe tvpaint will be the first (raster) all-in-one studio that is worth the name?!

Hi isd,
I have understood your problem and for now it is not possible, but I can give you some advises:
- In your project 3, just set all paramteres of the keyframer without applying it. Set as source your project 2 and when you modify your ptoject 1, your project 3 is updated and when you have your final animation apply the keyframer.
- You can too save your parametered stack for using it later.

We will see what we can do for these improvements in a future version. Thank you for sharing your mind with us.

Regards,
Patrice

> In your project 3, just set all paramteres of the keyframer without applying it. Set as source your project 2 and when you modify your ptoject 1, your project 3 is updated and when you have your final animation apply the keyframer.

Oh that is nice
(I still can't see anything in the project 4 if i don't render the project 3.
But at least it is nice to know it works for one level ^^ )


>You can too save your parametered stack for using it later.

If I don't have several camera movements yeah, I think I could still do that.

Thank you.